


Beloved

by murderousfiligree



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 05:25:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18218804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murderousfiligree/pseuds/murderousfiligree
Summary: Dan didn’t know how the man escaped from prison, much less how he ended up in his bedroom. But he did know one thing: Herbert West deserved the truth.





	Beloved

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place partly after the third movie, partly between the first two movies. I’ve read the original short stories and some of the extended canon, but ultimately the movies are my favorite iteration of the Hebert West story, so that’s the focus here. 
> 
> This has been sitting on my hard drive for quite a few months. I hope yall enjoy it.

_It's so quiet I can hear_  
_My thoughts touching every second_  
_That I spent waiting for you_  
_Circumstances afford me_  
_No second chance to tell you_ _  
How much I've missed you._

—[ VNV Nation, “Beloved” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfc3zcnrWMQ)

 

Dan Cain woke to cold steel on his throat.

The bedroom was dim, but not lightless; he could just make out the amber hue of the unfinished whiskey on his nightstand. Still, it took him a moment to recognize the dark shape looming over him. It had been almost fourteen years, after all, and he had never expected to see the man again.

“Herbert?” Dan swallowed; the subsequent bob of his Adam’s apple forced the knife into his skin. “Herbert, what are you doing?”

The man shifted. Dan became aware of the hip pressing into his side, of the hand splayed on his bare chest. He felt a drop of blood slide down his throat and onto his white pillowcase.

“You’re hurting me.”

The pressure on his throat eased a little, but Herbert held his position: sitting beside Dan on the bed, leaning sideways so the hand on Dan’s chest bore the weight of his upper body. Half of his face was visible in the moonlight.

“Are you alone in this house?” he said. It was strange how time could change a face yet leave the voice untouched—Herbert sounded exactly as he had when they’d met, over twenty years ago.

“Yes,” Dan replied. “There’s no one else here.”

“Expecting anyone?”

“No.”

He felt dark eyes consider him from behind small black spectacles. “Wife out of town?”

Ah. So he’d seen the pictures. There weren’t many left—after he and Eliza separated, Dan had trashed most of them in a drunken rage—but he couldn’t bear to take down their wedding photos. When the divorce went through he supposed he’d have to, but he wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

“We aren’t together anymore,” he said. He almost added, _Neighbors out of town, too. You could slit my throat right here, Herbert, and the world would be none the wiser,_ but thought better of it.

A long silence stretched between them. As Dan’s eyes began to adjust, he noticed the red stains on the man’s white shirt. Blood, of course. With Herbert West it could hardly be anything else.

“Why did you do it, Dan?” Herbert said at last. The pressure of the knife belied his gentle tone. “Why did you turn me in?”

Dan let his gaze drift, tracing patterns in the stucco ceiling. He could feel his pulse racing beneath the blade. “I can’t think with this thing on my throat, Herbert.”

“What would you have me do, Dan? Were I to release you, you might overpower me and flee. Or kill me, for that matter.”

Dan moved a hand to his chest, so his palm covered Herbert’s fingers. He gave them a light squeeze. “Do you really think I’d kill you?”

Herbert frowned at the touch. The creases around his mouth were deeper than Dan remembered, and that jarred him, somehow. Part of him had always assumed that Herbert West was immortal.  

“I never thought you would betray me, until you did,” Herbert said. “I don’t know what you’re capable of.”

That stung, but he supposed it was fair.

“There’s a pistol in the top drawer of the nightstand,” Dan said after a pause. “If you’re going to kill me, I’d rather it be with that, anyway.”

The man shifted again, withdrawing his hand from Dan’s grasp. The nightstand was close to the bed—close enough for Herbert to lean over and examine its contents without moving the knife.

“Is it loaded?”

“Yes.”

The knife vanished from his throat, but only, he suspected, because Herbert needed two hands to verify his assertion. Dan considered rushing him while he inspected the weapon, but decided that was apt to get him killed. Besides, part of him—the same idiotic part that thought Herbert West immortal—wanted back in the man’s good graces.

Herbert backed away from the bed, gun in hand.

“Now,” he said, tossing the knife to the floor. “I suggest you start talking.”

Dan peeled back the sheets covering his waist and pushed himself to a sitting position. Planting his feet on the carpet, he got his first good look at his former partner.

The new lines around his mouth weren’t so deep when he wasn’t frowning. His hair had suffered losses at the temples, but he was far from bald; all in all, he didn’t look so different from the man he’d left screaming in the interrogation room thirteen years ago.

Dan cleared his throat. “God, Herbert, I...I don’t know where to start.”

The man raised his eyebrows but said nothing. He did adjust his grip on the gun, however, and the gravity of that gesture weighed on Dan more heavily than words.

“Deciding to turn you in was the hardest decision I ever made. I could give you a short, simple explanation, but it wouldn't be the truth.” He eyed the barrel of the weapon, which, at its current angle, would bury a bullet in his gut. “The truth is complicated. Messy. I’m a human being, Herbert. My actions can’t be reduced to simple cause and effect.”

“Everything can be reduced to cause and effect,” Herbert said. “But I don’t have time to debate philosophy.” He approached the window, where the pale glow of moonlight slipped through the Venetian blinds. “At my estimate, we have two hours before my departure becomes urgent. You have until then to tell me your version of the truth.”

_And then he’ll kill me,_ Dan thought. _Or maybe he won’t, but he sure as hell isn’t leaving me in a position where I can blab to the cops again. He’s too careful for that._

Dan rubbed his temples. Refusing to talk could only shorten his life—and besides, he felt that Herbert deserved the truth. “Do you remember the first time we were, ah...intimate?”

Herbert’s eyes narrowed. “I fail to see how that’s relevant.”

“It is. Trust me, it is.” Dan tilted his head back, eyes again drawn to the patterns in the ceiling. He smiled—tentatively at first, then widely, with the warmth of memory. “When you kissed me that day, I was so surprised I forgot how to breathe…”

* * *

It was a crisp October morning in Arkham. Though the sky was clear, there was a strong northerly wind; Dan had been standing at the doorstep of his old house for nearly five minutes, and he was starting to wish he’d worn a sweater. Shifting from foot to foot, he was reaching for the buzzer again when Herbert finally opened the door.

“Dan?” The man looked surprised to see him.

“I just forgot a few things.” Dan rubbed the back of his neck. He and Herbert hadn’t spoken since he’d moved out, and their final conversation hadn’t exactly been friendly. “I won’t be long.”

“Ah.” Herbert stepped aside. “Of course. Take your time.”

The place had been a wreck last time he’d seen it—windows shattered, doors busted in, books and papers scattered to hell. Herbert had cleaned up well. Though the drab decor was unchanged, the living room seemed somehow lighter.

“Found a new roommate yet?” Dan asked, starting toward the room that had once been his.

“Not looking.”

Well, it wasn’t as if he needed to. Now that they both had their licenses, they could afford to live alone. Still, something in the way Herbert said it made him feel like the conversation wasn’t over.

“Me neither,” Dan said, pushing open the door to his old room. “Living alone has its perks.”

It was exactly as he’d left it: walls stripped bare, closet doors ajar, and four small rectangular imprints where the bedposts used to be. There was a pile of books on the dresser—the only furniture left in the room—and he gathered them under his arm.

“It has disadvantages, too.” Herbert was leaning on the doorframe, watching him closely. “Living alone, I mean.”

Dan gave the room one last look before stepping toward the doorway, which was currently blocked by his former roommate. He looked at Herbert expectantly, but the man didn’t budge.

“Please move,” Dan sighed. “I got what I came for.”

“Did you?” Herbert was close now, looking up at him with an expression Dan couldn’t quite place.

“Yeah, I did. And I really should be getting home, so if you’ll just—”

And then, with no warning, Herbert had kissed him.  
  
Dan could smell his aftershave, pine and witch hazel, and he marveled at the scent; he’d kissed many people in his life, but they’d always smelled sweet. Meg had worn vanilla perfume. Francesca favored the smell of roses. But pine was a distinctly masculine fragrance, and when he remembered to take a breath it dawned on him that he was kissing a man, and not just any man but Herbert West, delinquent doctor and scientist of questionable sanity.

Herbert pulled back after the longest five seconds of Dan Cain’s life, glasses askew and red mouth parted.

They stared at each other then. Herbert’s dark eyes measured his reaction to the kiss as they’d measured the reaction of countless beings (and their dismembered fragments) to his odious reagent. When it became apparent the man was not going to explain, Dan forced himself to speak.

“What the hell was that?”

Herbert adjusted his glasses with his left hand; the right was still on Dan’s shoulder. “A gamble,” he said, stepping aside. “You can leave now, if you’d like.”

Dan didn’t move. He felt rooted to the carpet floor, clutching his books with a palm that was getting sweatier by the second. Then, not stopping to think (for if he’d stopped to think, he’d have walked away—or at least that’s what he’d tell himself later, as he lay in Herbert’s bed watching day turn into dusk), he grabbed the man’s thin black tie and pulled him into another kiss.

The first had been tentative, almost chaste. The second was deep and desperate, seething with a tension that had been growing between them for a year—a tension Dan had been blind to until Herbert’s kiss had snapped it clean in two.

His books tumbled to the floor. A cold hand slipped up his shirt. He pulled Herbert’s body flush against his own and oh, yeah, that was _definitely_ an erection pressing against his thigh. Dan was half hard himself, and whatever that meant about his newly endangered heterosexuality was a problem for another day.

“My bed,” Herbert gasped. “Now.”

Dan didn’t need to be told twice.

They stumbled to Herbert’s room, Dan tossing his shirt to the hallway floor, Herbert fumbling with the buttons on his own. He’d been in Herbert’s room before, but never long enough to get a good look. An anatomical chart— the human brain in vivid color—was framed above the room’s only dresser. The double bed was plain but neatly made; a small indentation in one of the white pillows, which were propped against a headboard of stained oak, was the only indication that anyone had slept beneath the gray fleece comforter.

Sinking onto the bed, Dan pulled Herbert into his lap. The man threaded both hands in his hair, kissing him like he’d been poisoned and the antidote was in the back of Dan’s throat.

Dan groaned. The wire frame of Herbert’s glasses pressed uncomfortably into his cheek, but he was more concerned with the growing discomfort in his groin. He was fully erect in jeans that suddenly felt two sizes too small.

“Take your pants off,” Herbert said, breaking the kiss. His voice was cold, clear, commanding; it was a voice that demanded obedience, whether the order was scientific or sexual. “I’m going to get lubricant.”

Dan was already sliding his boxers past his hips when he realized what Herbert had just implied.

“Uh, Herbert?”

“What.”

Now naked himself, Herbert was digging in the bottom drawer of his nightstand. It was bizarre enough to see the man without a tie, but with no clothes at all he was almost unrecognizable.

“You’re not going to. Um. You know I don’t want to—”

“I am not about to fuck you, Dan.” Herbert set a small bottle on the nightstand. His mouth was twitching, as if fighting back laughter. “That is not my usual role in these...encounters.”

“Oh. Good.”

Dan kicked his jeans onto the floor, letting that comment simmer while Herbert opened a condom with his teeth.

“Hold on,” Dan said, gripped by a new revelation in what was quickly becoming a day of revelations. “You’ve done this before?”

“Many times, yes. Though it has been a while.”

Herbert swung a leg over Dan’s hips, straddling him without ceremony. Morning light filtered through white gossamer curtains, lending Herbert’s skin a warm tone Dan had seldom seen. They had worked so often in that stygian basement, lit only by dim lamps and the preternatural glow of the reagent, that Dan had always found his partner’s complexion bordering on sickly; here, in the natural light, with his slender body and red erection rising from a thatch of dark hair, he looked beautiful and strange.

Dan swallowed hard. “So, uh... you’re gay?”

“You know, Dan,” Herbert said, slipping the condom over Dan’s cock with both hands, “for a such an intelligent man you can be profoundly stupid.”

Herbert kissed him again before he could reply, which was just as well, since the feeling of Herbert’s hands on his cock destroyed any semblance of a comeback his mind might have supplied.

After a long moment Herbert pulled back, removing his glasses and placing them next to the lube. “I need you to do something for me, Danny,” he said.

Dan’s cock twitched at the use of the nickname; he’d only heard Herbert say it once or twice, and never in the low, rasping tone he was using now.

“What?”

Herbert grabbed the little bottle and pressed it into his palm. “I need you to put your fingers inside me.”

Dan stared at him stupidly.

“You’re familiar with the mechanics of anal sex, I assume?”

“Yeah, I just…” He reached up to cup Herbert’s face, tracing the curve of the jaw with his thumb. “I don’t see you without glasses much. You look cute.”

Herbert made a face; the expression looked halfway between flustered and annoyed.

“Do you want to fuck me, Dan?”

Dan let his hand drop to Herbert’s thigh. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“Then put your fingers in me.” His hand ghosted over Dan’s cock. “You’re much too large for me to take without warming up.”

The heat of Herbert’s palm through the condom broke his reverie. Fumbling with the bottle, Dan squeezed a generous amount of lube onto his fingers and hooked his arm around Herbert’s waist.

“Like this?” he asked, slipping his middle finger in up to the first knuckle.

“Deeper.”

Dan obliged, pushing in all the way, then withdrawing, then repeating the motion. Resting his forehead against Herbert’s chest, he could hear the man’s breath quickening.

“Add another,” Herbert said. “And curve your fingers when you’re inside.”  

Right. Prostate stimulation. As well acquainted as he was with human anatomy, Dan had never taken a male lover; he glanced down, eyeing the bead of pre-come forming at the tip of Herbert’s cock, half wondering what it would taste like. It occurred to him that straight men don’t often contemplate the flavor of other men’s semen, but he did his best to ignore the thought.

“Dan?”

“Sorry.” He pressed a second finger inside, curving both as Herbert had instructed; he was instantly rewarded with a delicious little gasp.

“Just like that, Danny,” Herbert rasped, jaw slackening in an open-mouthed smile. “Oh, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.”

“How long?” Dan asked. He suddenly recalled the warmth of Francesca’s breast, moonlight through stained glass, the vague sense of being watched. “Since Peru?”

“Earlier.” Herbert grabbed a fistful of Dan’s hair, bracing against him. “You’re a smart man. I have a type.”

“Smart men?”

“Yes.”

“So my dashing good looks had nothing to do with it?”

Herbert’s mouth quirked. “I suppose they didn’t hurt.”

“You suppose.” Dan added a third finger, hiding his grin in Herbert’s chest.

“Don’t get cocky,” Herbert said, shifting forward so Dan’s fingers slipped out of him. Dan felt the head of the man’s cock brush the skin above his navel, and secretly relished the damp sensation. “I’m ready now.”

“Are you sure?” Dan pulled back to search Herbert’s face. “Because if you need to, we can—shit, Herbert, that’s cold.”

The man’s skin was flushed, his dark eyes half lidded. He was squeezing the lube directly onto Dan’s erection.

“No more waiting.” Dan felt Herbert’s asshole against the head of his cock, warm and inviting after the shock of the lube. “I’m going to ride you now, Danny.”  

As Herbert sank down his length, Dan could only respond with a strangled moan.

“You’re big,” Herbert said, when he’d impaled himself completely. “I’ll need a moment.”

“Take your time,” Dan gasped. He felt dangerously close already, and the thought of coming so soon was mortifying. “God, you’re tight.”

Herbert slipped his arms around Dan’s neck and began pulling himself up with excruciating slowness. A faint peal of thunder rolled through the window; in a haze which was almost delirium, Dan imagined it was the sound of his own trembling.

“None of your girlfriends let you take them like this.” Herbert said. An observation, not a question.

“No,” Dan agreed. “They didn’t. I asked Meg once, but she—”

“Not important.” Herbert was sliding down again, faster than the first time. “I’m here now.”

“Yes.” A cloud passed over the sun, plunging the room into sudden darkness. Dan tilted his head, considering the man-shaped shadow in his lap. “You are.”

Herbert closed the distance between them.

* * *

After the first round (Herbert tactfully refrained from commenting on the duration, which couldn’t have been more than two minutes), Dan pushed Herbert onto his back, dipped his head between the man’s legs, and took him into his mouth. Initially he thought the flavor milder than a woman’s, but when Herbert came, clawing and moaning and crying “Danny” in a way that made him ache in more ways than one, the taste was strong and bitter. He swallowed without complaint.

Herbert rode him again after that, bracing himself on the headboard while Dan twisted the sheets in a white-knuckled grip. Outside, turgid clouds transformed a bright blue morning into a gray afternoon; Herbert’s voice, a low chant of yeses over the din of the rain, melded with his own formless moans. For once Dan was glad their only neighbors were corpses.

They stayed in bed until hunger drove them to the kitchen, where Dan wound up pinning Herbert to the refrigerator, knocking an assortment of magnets to the tile floor, and fucking him until they both came for what was at least the fourth time that day.

He moved back in, of course.

Not all at once—no, Dan was too prideful to admit he’d lost, that he was once again wrapped around Herbert West’s little finger. After work the next day, he’d retrieved a toothbrush and a change of clothes, nothing more. A week later, he’d brought a duffel bag full of clothing and other necessities. A full month passed before he had the furniture moved back to his old room. Around that time, he finally placed an ad in the paper, seeking subletters for his house; Herbert had balked at the suggestion that the two of them move there. It seemed recent events had not quenched his partner’s desire for human remains, and the cemetery was too convenient to abandon.

Herbert was at least respectful of his own abstention. Half a year went by without incident—Dan steering clear of the basement, Herbert waiving his usual monologues regarding the nature of his experiments. In this manner they achieved some semblance of normalcy. And if Dan lay awake listening to grotesque thumps of flesh against concrete, the depraved moans of creatures torn from the placidity of the afterlife, the muffled gunshots, the ensuing silence? If he waited, heart racing, for the strangled cry which meant one of those monstrosities had his lover by the throat? He never mentioned it; though he would sometimes kiss the bruises which covered Herbert’s body in varying shades of blue and green, an unspoken apology for his absence.

Then, one morning, Herbert broke his silence on the subject of re-animation.

They were eating breakfast at the kitchen table. At 6AM the sun was still hidden behind the treeline, but the sky was uncharacteristically clear for April. Since becoming doctors, he and Herbert worked a regular shift—7AM to 3PM, barring emergencies. It was good, honest work, and Dan was glad to be saving lives, even if he couldn’t save them all.

Herbert pushed his plate of half-eaten eggs aside. “Dan, I have something I’d like to talk to you about.”

Dan looked up from his newspaper. According to the front page, there’d been a car accident late last night; they’d lost a little girl, only five years old. It had happened when he was off-duty, and Dan wasn’t sure whether or not to be grateful for that.

“What is it?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

“I know you don’t want to...participate in my experiments,” Herbert said. “But I’ve made advances recently—with _animal_ subjects,” he added, at Dan’s disapproving scowl. “I think I finally understand why the re-animated dead behave so erratically.”

“Wasn’t it an issue of freshness? That minutes, or even seconds of decay damages brain tissue?”

“That’s what I thought at first,” Herbert continued. “But Lieutenant Chapham was our freshest human subject, and he was no less violent or incoherent than any other. Freshness is most assuredly a factor. But if freshness were the _only_ factor, we would expect the animalistic behavior to always worsen with worsening decay.

“I’ve been conducting a series of experiments with rats—both adults and pups—with promising results. Firstly, a gradual administration of the reagent produces a marked decrease in the initial violent outburst—imagine waking up with the sunrise, as opposed to an alarm clock. It’s less of a shock for the body. Secondly—and most importantly—the pups demonstrate higher memory retention and lessened erratic behavior compared to the adults.”

Dan had abandoned his half-eaten toast. It’d been a long time since Herbert had harangued him like this, and he was horrified to realize that part of him had missed it. “Do the pups show any erratic behavior at all?”

“Yes,” Herbert confessed. “Compared to their…predeceased state, the pups show elevated cortisol and adrenaline. But compared to the adult rats, the magnitude of the increase is less. A lot less. _Eighty-two percent_ less, for the youngest group. I’ve been administering growth hormones to the re-animated pups—their bodies would be otherwise incapable of aging, you see—and some of them have grown into healthy, if somewhat aggressive, adult rats. I suspect it has to do with the plasticity of young brains.”

Dan considered this in silence. Part of him was excited—after all they’d been through, had Herbert finally conquered death?—but another part of him was afraid. Herbert never revealed anything without cause, and he had a feeling the man was building up to something unpleasant.

“Why are you telling me this?” he said at last. “I don’t suppose you’ve finally decided to publish your findings?”

“No.” Herbert’s eyes drifted to the newspaper and back up again. “I’m telling you all this because I want to save that little girl.”

Dan’s heart leapt into his throat. Through the kitchen window he could see the sun peeking through the pines, flooding the kitchen with its florid light.

“I’ll need your help,” Herbert said. “It’s delicate work, and we may not get another opportunity like this for a long while.”

“People aren’t rats, Herbert,” Dan snapped. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then it doesn’t work.” Herbert shrugged. “Success is never guaranteed. But we can give her a chance, Dan, don’t you see? Even if it’s only a small chance—and I don’t think it is—doing something is better than doing nothing.”

“Is it really?” Dan rose to his feet. “I’ve seen enough of your _experiments_ to know that they never die peacefully. When you revive them they’re confused, angry, and in a hell of a lot of pain. Then you put a bullet in their head and call it mercy.” He swallowed hard. “I won’t do it again, Herbert. Not to anyone, and _especially_ not to a child.”

There was silence for a beat.

“It’s been six hours since the accident, Dan.” Herbert’s voice was maddeningly calm. “And while we sit here arguing her body is rotting. I won’t deny that my previous efforts have had...unfortunate results. But I have six months of research which says this time will be different. Wouldn’t you be willing to endure a period of confusion, or even of pain, if it meant that you had the chance to grow up?”

Dan blanched. The strength seemed to drain out of his legs; sinking back into the chair, he pressed his palms into his eyes. This was a bad idea, and he knew it. Every cell in his body knew it. All of Herbert’s human experiments had ended badly, if not downright catastrophically. Why, then, couldn’t he summon the strength to say no?

“Danny?” Herbert was behind him now, squeezing his shoulders. “I need an answer.”

“How are we going to get her body?” he said faintly. “They’ve doubled the guard around the morgue since they noticed all the missing parts.”

“I’ll handle it. I’ve already called the hospital and told them you’re unwell. I’ll come straight home after I retrieve the body, complaining of the same malady.”

Dan’s stomach wrenched. The fact that Herbert had been so confident he’d yield made him feel vaguely ill.

“Finish your breakfast.” Herbert kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be right back.”

* * *

Half an hour later, Dan stood over the metal slab that served as an operating table in Herbert’s laboratory. The body was in a duffel bag—the same duffel bag Dan had lived out of during his first month back in the house. He made a mental note to burn it, regardless of the outcome of their experiment.

The brick wall adjacent to the Christchurch crypt was completely repaired. There hadn’t been much left of the basement last time Dan had seen it; now, with the addition of rats in wire cages stacked from floor to ceiling, it looked nearly the same as it had before he and Herbert had decided to play Frankenstein.

“Get her ready,” Herbert said. “I’ll prepare the reagent.”

Dan looked down at his hands. The effect of their trembling, which he could see but couldn’t seem to feel, coupled with the white latex gloves, produced the peculiar sensation that they did not belong to him. Nevertheless, he unzipped the bag with a slow precision that was almost mechanical.

She was small.

He knew, intellectually, that she would be. But pulling the corpse of a child, barely three feet tall, from a bag where he used to keep gym clothes and deodorant was almost too much to bear.

“Dan?” Herbert was watching him carefully, holding a syringe filled with that phosphorescent solution which was the source of so much woe. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” he lied, and set the body flat on the table. She was wearing a pale pink shirt and blue overalls, decorated with what looked like hand-embroidered flowers. Her ash brown bangs were matted with blood. “Looks like there could be head trauma.”

“The damage is superficial,” Herbert said. “She has a cracked skull, but the prefrontal cortex sustained only minor damage.”  
  
“Then how did she die?”

“Lost too much blood too fast.” He inclined his head toward the IV pole, from which a red bag was hanging. “I have plenty in her type. She’ll need it when she wakes up.”

Dan nodded mutely.

Herbert pulled the tape recorder from his coat pocket and placed it at the edge of the table. In the charnel stillness, Dan could hear the spools turning in the cassette.

“Subject is five years old, thirty-six pounds, and female,” Herbert began. “Deceased for six hours and forty-five minutes at time of recording.” With his free hand, he bent the girl’s arm at the elbow, then her leg at the knee; both moved with ease. Next, he grabbed the top of her head, turning it from side to side in a gesture of negation; the motion looked stiff and unnatural. “Limbs are flexible. Rigor mortis apparent in the neck,” he continued. “Time is 7:08 AM. Now injecting 8 ccs of reagent at the top of the spinal cord.”

As Herbert tilted her head forward, Dan was possessed by a sudden urge to grab the man’s wrist, to throw the syringe to the floor, to grab the little body and run as far away from Herbert West as his legs would carry him.

He did none of these things, of course.

Instead, he watched the reagent vanish, milliliter by milliliter, while his partner depressed the plunger. When the barrel was empty, he started the timer without so much as a murmur of protest.

Herbert retrieved a silver flashlight from his pocket, peeled back the girl’s eyelid with his index finger, and aimed the narrow beam at one glazed blue eye. “No pupillary reactivity yet. Time?”

“Ten seconds.”

Silence settled between them for a spell. Early in their collaboration, Dan had waited for Herbert’s subjects to wake with hopeful wonder; now, all he felt was a sort of mounting dread.

“I administered the reagent more gradually than usual,” Herbert mused. “It could take her a few minutes to—”

“Herbert.” Dan’s mouth was very dry. “I think she’s breathing.”

Herbert returned to the girl at once, pinching her wrist between his thumb and forefinger. “Time?”

“Fifty-six seconds.”

“She has a pulse.” The man grinned. “Re-animation at fifty-six seconds. We need to insert the IV. Dan, hold her while I—”

The rest of his command was lost in an ear-splitting shriek.

She was sitting upright, blue eyes wide with terrible clarity. Little white teeth framed the open mouth; from a distance of three feet, Dan could smell the putrescent stench of her breath.

“Lily?” Dan said. “Lily, can you tell me how old you are?”

There was a grotesque cracking sound as she twisted toward his voice.

“You were in an accident,” Dan continued, voice quavering. “You’re going to feel a poke in your hand. It’ll be over quick, okay? Dr. West and I are here to help you.”

Herbert seized her wrist and stuck the needle in the vein; the girl which had once been called Lily let loose another scream at the assault, her face contorted in an expression of rage which was undeniably feral. Fresh blood seeped from the wound on her head, running down her face in red rivulets.

“Hold her down,” Herbert shouted. “I’ll tranquilize her.”

Dan tried pushing her back, one hand splayed on bloody overalls, the other gripping her shoulder. The girl resisted him with a strength he had come to expect from the re-animated dead, but which seemed exceptionally strange in such a small body.

“I need you to lay down, Lily,” Dan said. The request had the plaintive air of a plea. “We can’t help you if you don’t lay down.”

The girl seemed to consider this. Her lower lip protruded in a contemplative pout, and for a moment Dan perceived a gleam of intelligence in her bloodshot eyes.

Then she lunged at him.

Little hands fastened around his neck. Teeth clamped down on the flesh of his cheek. He saw nothing but red, smelled nothing but putrid breath mingled with the copper scent of his own blood.

Somewhere—it might as well have been another dimension—Herbert was yelling. Rats squeaked excitedly in their cages. Though it was surely impossible over the din, Dan fathomed he still heard the tape unspooling in Herbert’s cassette.

Suddenly the girl was yanked away and his face erupted in agony.

“The gun, Dan!” Herbert barked. The man was flat on his back, pinning the girl to his chest with crossed arms. When she opened her mouth to unleash another demonic screech, a chunk of flesh dropped out.

Dan observed this spectacle as if standing on the floor of some great body of water, looking up at dim impressions of the surface; part of him recognized that the flesh on the ground had once been part of his face, but he absorbed the knowledge without feeling.

“The gun,” Herbert repeated. “Look behind you, Dan!”

He obeyed with a sort of languid detachment. The pistol was on the counter, next to a series of beakers, one of which was still faintly glowing with green residue. He picked up the weapon, considering the weight of it in his hand.

A second scream—hoarse and thin, but clearly belonging to a man—replaced that of the undead girl’s. At first he thought the scream was his own—then he remembered that Herbert was behind him, that Hebert was restraining the girl, and that he was staring uselessly at the gun in his hand while his lover was, in all likelihood, being disemboweled by the savage imp he’d helped create.

Dan wheeled around.

The girl had her teeth in Herbert’s forearm. His white coat was drenched red where she’d bitten through the fabric, and he had the deathly pallor of a man well on his way to exsanguination.

Without thinking, Dan closed the distance between them, pressed the gun to the girl’s temple, and fired.  

The side of her head exploded in a gush of gore.

He fell to his knees, shoved the twitching cadaver aside, and clasped Herbert’s wound to staunch the bleeding. The man let out a pained hiss.

“You’ll be okay,” Dan said. His own voice sounded foreign to him. “The bite’s deep, but your arm’s not broken.”

“She wasn’t fresh enough.” Herbert’s eyes were clouded, his pale face spattered with blood and brain matter. “If we’d gotten to her three hours earlier, we could have done it, Dan. Next time we need to...”

And there, in that cursed basement, kneeling in blood, listening to the disjointed ramblings of his partner, Dan Cain realized something terrible.

* * *

“What did you realize?”

Herbert was seated in the loveseat by the door, elbow resting on his thigh, chin resting on his left hand. The pistol was in his right, held loosely and pointed at the floor, where the first intimation of sunrise was creeping across the carpet. Dan had been talking for almost an hour.

“I realized…” Dan looked at the pillow in his lap, fingering a spot of dried blood from the cut on his neck. “I always thought I could balance you, Herbert.”

“Balance me?”  
  
“Yeah. You were a better scientist than me—one of the best scientists in the world, and I don’t say that to flatter you—but you were lacking a conscience. Empathy.” Dan shook his head. “You taught me how to be a better researcher. Hell, you taught me how to be a better doctor. I’m too empathetic; sometimes that makes me lose perspective. Between the two of us, we—”

“Balanced each other,” Herbert finished.

“Yeah. But what we did to that girl made me realize I couldn’t anymore. Balance you, I mean. I knew what we were doing was wrong, and I didn’t say no. Because I wasn’t the paragon of objectivity I’d imagined myself to be. I was...compromised.”

“Compromised? That’s your excuse?” Herbert made a flippant gesture with the pistol. “So you took it upon yourself to prevent me from crossing the boundaries of your pathetic morality, and when you realized you’d failed, you packed up and left? It was never about _balance_ , Dan. It was about control. It wasn’t my fault that you deluded yourself into believing that you or anyone else could control me.” His voice, already low, dropped to a whisper. “If you’d just washed your hands of the affair, I’d have understood. But you didn’t. When those bastards called you in as a witness, you told them everything.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Oh?” Herbert cocked his head. “You didn’t tell them everything?”

“It wasn’t about control.”

“Then what, pray tell, was it about? I’ve been listening you blather for an hour now and I’m not any closer to understanding—”

“Goddamnit, Herbert, I was in love with you! That’s why I couldn’t be objective. Because as long as I loved you, I knew I’d do anything you asked me to do, and the only way to get you to stop asking me was to leave. So I left.”

For once, Herbert was speechless. A pair of birds twittered outside the window, which was reddening in the approaching dawn.

“When I got the call that you were in custody,” Dan continued, “I got to thinking. You weren’t going to stop your experiments. You didn’t have me there to protect you if anything went wrong. A jail cell was probably the safest place for you, all things considered. And maybe it was selfish of me, but I didn’t want you to die, Herbert.”

Dan squeezed the pillow to his chest; it was a childish gesture, but at the grand old age of forty-two he’d ceased to feel self-conscious about such minutiae.

“I thought I might be gay, you know.” He smiled mirthlessly. “That that was why women weren’t doing it for me anymore, after you went to prison. I slept with a lot of men before I gave up on that theory. I’m bisexual, sure. But that doesn’t mean I can fall in love with just anybody. Until Eliza, I thought I would never…” His voice faltered. “I thought I’d never fall in love again.”

“You turned me in to _protect_ me?” Herbert’s expression was opaque, but his tone carried a hint of incredulity. “Because you were in _love_ with me?”

“Yeah. I was. Though I shouldn’t use the past tense. I don’t think love is something you can just fall out of.” Dan rubbed the back of his neck, fingering the cut on the side of his throat. “If you want me to apologize, I will. I’m sorry. I hated doing it. But if I had to go back, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. So if you’re going to kill me for that, I wish you’d go ahead and get it over with.”

Dan could feel Herbert’s gaze—cold, calculating, merciless—searching him for the slightest suggestion of dishonesty. When the man finally stood, Dan tilted his head back to look him in the eye, assuming an air of fearlessness.

Those who have had a brush with death can attest to the languorous quality of the moments preceding the event—the speeding car, an indistinct blur to the witness, is seen by the stricken pedestrian in exquisite detail; the knife sliding into the gut, an act taking less than an instant for the perpetrator, stretches to hours for the victim; in this manner, Herbert’s walk from the loveseat to the bed seemed, to Dan Cain, to last an eternity.

He felt the pistol slide across the stubble on his chin, then across the scar on his cheek where hair would never grow again. The barrel lingered on the scar, then slid past his neck, tracing his spine.

“Oh, Danny.” Herbert sank into his lap. “Do you really think I’d kill you?”

“Yes.”

Herbert’s laugh was a harsh, reedy sound, a few decibels shy of a cackle. “That’s a fair assessment, given your position. Here.” He tossed the gun aside; it made a sharp _clang_ as it collided with the wrought iron headboard. “Better?”

“It’s a start.”

Dan let his hands slide to Herbert’s hips. It was a striking image—almost identical to the first time they’d had sex, with the unwelcome addition of the bloody shirt and trousers.

“I threw the gun away because I trust you,” he whispered, lips ghosting over Dan’s ear. “Now what I need is for you to trust me. Will you do that, Dan?”

He nodded slowly.

“Burn my clothes in your fireplace while I shower—I’ll need to borrow some of yours. Then I need you to pack a bag, and quickly. The police will realize I’m missing soon, if they haven’t already.”

Dan didn’t bother asking how many days he should pack for; he knew that he was never coming back to the house, that he would never see Eliza again. Perhaps that was for the best, anyway.

“Dan?”  
  
“I heard you.” He cupped Herbert’s face with one hand. The sunrise lent a warm flush to his otherwise sallow complexion. “I missed you.”

Herbert slipped his fingers beneath the hand, prying it off with a dismissive huff—but before he let go he appeared to hesitate. He looked at the hand as if seeing it for the first time; then, bringing the palm to his mouth, he kissed it with a tenderness Dan hadn’t thought him capable.

“Herbert,” he said softly. “God, Herbert, I—”

“Pack your bag.”  Herbert released the hand. “We don’t have much time.”

Then the man was out of reach again, his dirty clothes in a pile on the loveseat, his newly naked form vanishing into the master bathroom. Dan took a deep breath and rose to his feet.

“And Dan?” Herbert’s head appeared in the doorway.

“Yeah?”

“You’ll need your passport.”

* * *

Yellow grass, half white with frost, stirred in the autumn breeze. The prairie stretched to a horizon of cobalt blue, unbroken except for a copse of coniferous trees to the west. Though cloudless, the sky bore a thin wisp of smoke rising from a little brick house—save for the barn, which sat a few yards away, the house was the only sign of human life for miles. An aging pickup truck gathered rust in the area of flattened grass which served as a driveway.

Inside the house, a man was yelling.

The noise was sufficient to scare a tiding of magpies from the land in front of the house. Pickings were plentiful for scavengers there; if the hatchlings borne of birds who ate the strange, still-struggling morsels had extra eyes or limbs, none noticed. Those deformed creatures never ventured far enough to capture the interest of neighbors.

Suddenly, the door to the house burst open. A short man with dark hair stormed out, headed in the direction of the barn. A second man appeared at the threshold, still yelling:  
“There’s no way in hell you’re doing this, Herbert!”

Herbert, evidently accustomed to this sort of exclamation, paid it no mind. He disappeared inside the barn; the second man soon followed suit.

Heated voices were still audible through the whitewashed doors, but the sound seemed to dissolve in the peculiar vastness of the Canadian prairie.

The magpies returned to their picking ground.

* * *

“You don’t understand.” Herbert spread his hands on the metal table. “This is what I’ve been working toward, all these years, Dan. Don’t you see?”

“It’s suicide,” Dan hissed. “The last time you jumped to conclusions based on animal trials was a disaster. That little girl—”

“Was not my last human experiment. I successfully revived two adults during my time in prison. They taught me that nano-plasmic energy is not transferable between species, nor between individuals of the same species. I’m going to—”

“Use your own NPE to revive yourself. I heard you the first time.” He turned to face the wall—rats, cats, wild-caught Albertan hares, and the ever-present iguanas eyed him fearfully from behind metal wire. “What I don’t understand is why.”

“You’re looking at why.” Herbert joined him in front of the cages. “Every one of the animals you see has been re-animated. Every one of them has levels of cortisol and adrenaline comparable to their predeceased state—just look at them! As docile as ever. And what’s more: no statistically significant memory loss. Each rat remembers the maze.”

“That’s no reason to put your own life on the line.”

“No. But there’s more.”

“What?”

Herbert approached one of the cages, fetching a sleek-looking black and white rat; it squirmed in the man’s grip.

“How long do rats live, Dan?”

“About two years.”

“And how old would you suppose this rat is?”

Dan considered the animal. “I don’t know. Maybe a year?”

“It was, in fact, two years old when I acquired it,” Herbert said, stroking its fur with his forefinger. “This rat was the first creature I reanimated when I renewed my experiments. That makes it nearly four years old now.”

“So, what, you think the reagent has life extending properties?” Dan shook his head. “I swear to God, Herbert, if you’re basing this on one rat…”

“I’m not.” He returned the animal to its cage. “I’ve examined nearly thirty subjects. There has been absolutely no degradation in their telomeres since reanimation.”

“None?”

“None.” Herbert’s eyes seemed strangely bright. “In ten years that rat will look the same as it does today—assuming it steers clear of cats.”

Dan sank back onto Herbert’s desk; the old wood creaked under his weight. “You’re talking about immortality.”

“Of course.” Herbert stepped forward, sliding cold hands onto Dan’s shoulders. “We aren’t getting any younger.”

“And what’s so bad about that?” Dan bowed his head against Herbert’s chest. “Getting old together?”

“There’s a difference between growing old because you have no choice and _choosing_ to grow old. Man has dreamed of immortality since time immemorial—from the apples of Idun to the fountain of youth—and _I_ have made that dream a reality.” Herbert’s hands crept beneath his jaw, tilting Dan’s head up to meet his eyes. “Think of the lives we’ll save. Of the future we’ll see. We’ll live _forever_ , Danny.”

The look on Herbert’s face was one he’d seen many times. In a stupid man, it would have been called insanity—in a man like Herbert West, it was usually chalked up to scientific zeal. Divorced from context, the expression was not so terrible, but in light of what Herbert was about to do, Dan couldn’t bear to see it. He closed his eyes.

“I can’t talk you out of this?”

“No.”

Dan took a deep breath. “Fine. Then kill me first.”

“What?”

“Kill me first.” He opened his eyes. “But if something goes wrong you have to promise me you won’t do it to yourself.”

Herbert’s hands dropped to his sides. His mouth twitched. “Fine. It makes no difference to me which of us is first. I’ll be joining you soon enough.”

“So you promise?”

“Yes, Dan. I promise. Though I’m confident it won’t be necessary.”

“You always are.”

Herbert ignored the comment. Opening one of the desk drawers, he withdrew a small glass cylinder capped with silver on each end. For the moment, the capsule was empty; if Herbert was to be believed, it would soon hold the spark of sentience he insisted was not a soul.

“Get on the table.”

Dan blanched. “Now?”

“Would you rather wait?”

He considered the question for a beat. Would he be able to sleep tonight, knowing what was coming? Could he even stomach his last meal? Already dread was coiling in his gut, ready to spring into full-blown panic.

“No,” he decided. “Let’s get this over with.”

Herbert gestured to the table. Dan pushed himself off the desk and approached the steel slab with slow, cautious steps, as if he feared it would leap forward and bite him. Stranger things had come to life in the lab of Herbert West, after all.

“It will hurt,” Herbert said, pressing the capsule into its receptacle, which was embedded in a thin electrical cord; it snapped into place with an audible _click_. “But it will be over quickly.”

“Don’t kid me, Herbert.” Dan licked his lips. “Death by electrocution can take fifteen minutes.”

“If you’re unlucky.” He retrieved a sponge floating in a pail by the door—the pail was filled daily with water from the well, in lieu of a proper sink.  
Using the sponge, he wet Dan’s temples and the palm of his left hand, though they were already damp with sweat. “Two minutes is more likely.”

“Two minutes is a long time to spend with a thousand volts between your ears.”

“Five hundred volts,” Herbert corrected, placing the electrodes on his temples. “Applied intermittently. And you won’t be conscious after the first jolt, I assure you. The way you talk, Dan, I’d almost think you’ve never died before.”

The grin which accompanied this remark led Dan to believe it was intended as a joke. He didn’t find it very funny.

“You’re going to feel a pinch at the base of your skull.” Herbert pressed the final electrode into his palm. “Then we’ll be all set.”

“A pinch?” He eyed the business end of the wire, which was outfitted with three silver tines; each was narrower than the average needle, but well over an inch in length.

Herbert shrugged. “A big pinch. Tilt your chin down, now, as far as it will go.”

He obeyed with some reluctance, more disturbed by his lover’s insouciant demeanor than by his own impending visit to the underworld.

“Good. Take a deep breath.”

As the tines lanced his spine, Dan was struck by a horrible thought: what if Herbert had meant for him to do this all along? It wasn’t like the man to risk his own life when warm bodies were available. He must have known Dan would object to the original plan—wouldn’t he also have known Dan would volunteer to take his place?

The barn door rattled in the wind. Dan’s gaze flitted to Herbert, who was occupied in drawing up his beloved reagent. Even if it were true, did it change anything?

Setting the loaded syringe on the desk, Herbert returned to his side. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” Dan’s stomach lurched. “No. I mean, not yet.”

“Awfully late for second thoughts, Dan.”

“It’s not that.” He traced the electrode on his palm with a trembling finger. “Before I do this I need to know something.”

“What?”

The wind seemed to subside in anticipation of his demand; only the soft whir of the space heater, too small for the massive barn, was audible in the subsequent stillness.

“I need to know if you love me.” Dan’s gaze dropped to his lap, where his chilblained hands were resting, palm-up, on his threadbare jeans. “You see, you’ve never said it, Herbert. Not before you went to prison, and not since we came here, either. I’m not saying I won’t do this for you, if you don’t love me. But if I’m going to risk my life, I feel like I should know. Do you love me?”

For a long while there was no reply. When the silence became intolerable, Dan looked up again, his eyes stinging with tears. “Did you _ever_ love me?”

Herbert’s expression was troubled: brows furrowed, pale mouth pressed into a thin line. Reaching out with his left hand (for the right still held the black wire), he traced Dan’s jaw with his thumb.

“Honestly, Dan. I didn’t think it was something that needed to be said.”

“Well it is. I need to hear you say it.”

“Very well, then.” Herbert averted his eyes. “Of course I do.”

“Do _what_?”

“Love you.”  

Dan let out a bark of mirthless laughter. “Really? You won’t even look at me. Christ, Herbert. If I’d known you were such a terrible liar I’d have—”

“I am _not_ lying,” he snapped. “Just because I have... difficulty expressing the sentiment does not make it untrue.”

“Then say it again. Like you mean it this time.”

Herbert took a deep breath. His hand shifted to grasp the back of Dan’s head; he pressed his body into the edge of the metal table, leaning in so their foreheads were touching.

“I love you,” he said firmly.

Dan shuddered. Both hands rose to cradle Herbert’s face, the wire dangling, forgotten, from the electrode on his left. “Again.”  

“I love you,” Herbert repeated.

“Now say ‘I love you, Dan Cain.’”

“I love you, Dan Cain.”

“Now kiss me.”  

Herbert obliged. It wasn’t much—his lips, barely parted, were cold and dry—but it was enough.

“Okay,” Dan said. “I’m ready.”

Pulling back, Herbert produced a white cloth from his pocket. “Lie down and put this in your mouth. I don’t want any cracked teeth.”

It was Dan’s turn to obey. As he lay supine on the steel slab, a singular calmness stole over him; his stomach quieted, his heartbeat slowed, his breaths became long and even. He saw Herbert’s head framed by the barn’s crude fluorescents and fancied it a halo.

“Here it comes, Danny.” The man’s voice was uncharacteristically soft. “Three, two…”

Dan sank his teeth into the cloth and closed his eyes.

* * *

Francesca Danelli was tired.

This was far from unusual—fatigue was something of an inevitability, at her age—but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.

She wasn’t happy about the cold, either—another inevitability, given her whereabouts. Her daughter had moved to Red Deer with her family almost two years ago; she’d put off visiting as long as she could, but excuses were hard to come by for a retiree of nearly a decade. It was October, and a bout of freezing rain had already paved the ground with ice.

Canada lived up to its reputation.

She’d driven to the grocery store with more caution than was probably necessary; the roads were sprinkled with a sparse layer of little rocks which provided more than adequate traction. Still, better safe than sorry, especially with a rental car.

Now she stood between the Safeway and Liquor Depot, groceries in hand, sweating in her comically puffy winter coat. She was considering dipping inside the liquor store for a bottle of Sangiovese. On one hand, she was technically on vacation. On the other, she was something of a lightweight, and there were impressionable grandchildren to consider.  

Deciding to forgo the wine, she stepped off the curb and into the crosswalk.  
  
The heel of her boot caught on a patch of ice. She threw up her hands, scattering groceries pell-mell; her body tumbled backwards toward the curb. Before she could hit the ground, a firm hand grasped her by the arm, hauling her back to her feet.

“You alright, ma’am?”

Francesca took a deep breath, steadying herself with the man’s arm. “Oh, yes. I’m quite alright. I might have broken my hip, if you hadn’t caught me! Thank you.”  

“Don’t mention it.” The man dropped to his knees, scooping up a can of tomato sauce and returning it to her cloth bag.

“Oh no, no, I’ve got it.” She began to kneel with visible difficulty. _Damn these old knees!_

“Please, ma’am, It’s no trouble. Really.” He flashed her a winsome smile.

She straightened again, bolt upright. It was a smile she’d seen before.

“Dan?” she whispered. “Dan Cain?”

He did not seem to hear her. She shook her head. It was impossible, anyway. If he was alive, Daniel Cain would be pushing eighty. This man didn’t look a day over forty-five.

“Do you want me to help you to your car?”

“You’re too kind,” she said, taking the proffered bags. “But I’ve got it.”

“I insist.” He picked up his own bag from the curb and offered her his free arm; she took it, unable to keep her eyes off his face. The resemblance to her former lover was striking—aside from the white scar on his cheek (an ugly, jagged thing the size of a silver dollar) and the addition of a few wrinkles, he looked identical to the Dan of her youth.

“You seem familiar,” she ventured.

“Do I?”

“Are you, by chance, related to a man named Daniel Cain?”

The man looked away. He pursed his lips. “The name doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Oh. You look like him, is all.”

“Must be one of those faces.”

“Must be.” She stopped in front of her car. “This is me. Thank you again.”

“No worries. Have a good day, ma’am.”

For a long moment, she stood watching him retreat toward the front of the lot. Not related to Daniel Cain! She wasn’t sure she believed that. The man had looked away when she’d said the name—he’d been lying. But why?

She set her bags in the trunk and closed it absently. Herbert West’s escape from prison and subsequent flight coincided with the disappearance of Dan Cain; they fled together, if the media was to be believed. But the papers hadn’t said anything about a son. She didn’t think Dan had _any_ children. Then again, they fell out of touch after the incident at Christchurch crypt. It wasn’t unfeasible that he had a child she didn’t know about.

She slipped into the driver’s seat, shaking her head. Maybe it was just a coincidence—after all, she hadn’t seen Dan in nearly fifty years. Memories were fallible, particularly when you were over the age of seventy.

“Plenty of people look alike,” she said to herself. “Dan is long dead and he never had a son. You’re an old fool if you think anything different.”

She depressed the car’s ignition button and glanced up in the rearview mirror.

She froze.

An old blue truck was passing behind her. Dan’s doppelgänger was at the wheel, talking with a dark-haired, bespectacled man in the passenger’s seat. This passenger seemed to watch her as they passed. It was a man she’d seen in newspapers, wanted posters, television—hell, he was even the subject of a documentary she’d watched a few years ago, a bit of Discovery channel drivel with more flair than fact. There was no doubt.

The man was Herbert West.

She wheeled around, heart pounding, hoping for a better look, but caught only a glimpse of the truck’s tail lights as it turned onto the street.

Francesca Danelli pressed the ignition button again, killing the car’s engine.

She was going to need that wine, after all.


End file.
